Bring the boobs back to Sesame Street

No, I'm not talking about that Katy Perry fiasco a couple of years back. This is something altogether more innocent: breastfeeding.

Back in the '70s and '80s, Sesame Street included breast feeding promotion as part of its educational mandate to American kids.

Here's Canada's own Buffy Sainte-Marie doing it with her son Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild in 1977:



And here's the character Maria (played by Sonia Manzano) nursing her real-life daughter, Gabriela, in 1988:



It's practically the same scene. But something happened on Sesame Street, as it grew out of its baby boomer roots and started becoming a corporate merchandising goliath. Breastfeeding somehow became something inappropriate for a kids' show.

The most damning piece of censorship is a touching musical segment called "You're My Baby".

In the original '70s version, the camera lingers on a nurseling:

Twenty-plus years later, when it was remade for a new generation of kids, the breast was replaced:

While certainly reflecting the reality, for many America parents (especially moms with very limited maternity leave!) the very deliberate substitution irked breastfeeding advocates such as Lani of the Boobie Time blog, who has started a petition to try to convince Sesame Street to promote breastfeeding again.

Why is this a big deal? Back in the earlier days, the show was actively promoting a behaviour that was in the interest of American babies. Breastfeeding rates were going up overall, but the increases were mostly accounted for by affluent "white" women. Rates among Hispanic and African Americans remained low. Sesame Street, the great social leveller, was doing its part to normalize the practice among all its viewing families — it was one of the show's many embedded bits of social marketing.

Zoom forward to the present, and American women continue to experience anti-breastfeeding sentiment, in public places, despite many legal protections. To put it bluntly, there are many who consider breasts to be sex-only organs, and who consider their public exposure in breastfeeding to be obscene.

In the latter "you're my baby" video, Sesame Street may have been reacting to the way many of its viewers really feed their babies — being descriptive rather than prescriptive. After all, the revolutionary show has focus groups and organized "decency" mobs to worry about now.

But can't they take a leadership position again? To model a better world than the one some viewers find themselves in?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks to my sister, Mary Jo, for sharing this story with me.

Georgia's "fat kids" campaign: wake-up call or useless guilt trip?

Annie at Fuse Communications sent me a link to this Georgia childhood obesity campaign from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, asking for my opinion. It's a tough one.



The brutally frank ads target the parents of overweight children, who are thought to be either unaware or in denial about how their children's diet and activity choices affect their health and self-esteem.




According to ABC news:

"Children's Healthcare of Atlanta chose the straightforward approach after its survey of two towns in Georgia found that 50 percent of parents did not know childhood obesity was a problem and 75 percent of parents with obese children did not think their child was overweight."

But here's that defensive processing dilemma, that keeps showing up in social marketing campaigns. Negative portrayals of viewer behaviour tend to make  the target market turn away, rather than mend their ways, and can even backfire.



The issue of parenting is an especially volatile one. Try having a civil conversation about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding, infant male circumcision, or co-sleeping with a random group of parents online. You'll end up with a flamewar.

Diet and fat-shaming is another one of these issues. While parents need to be aware that their obese and/or inactive kids need healthier habits for their own sake, when you criticize someone's parenting you really hit them where it hurts most. I expect this campaign did exactly that.



From the original article:

"Blaming the victim rarely helps," said Dr. Miriam Labbok, director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "These children know they are fat and that they are ostracized already."
...
"While guilt and fear are motivators, they have to be meted out with the answer to the situation," Labbok said. "The ads with the children do not offer help to them."
According to health communication experts, successful public health campaigns offer a clear call to action. Labbok says the Georgia ads address the problem, but don't give viewers a clear solution.

So what's the answer? Social marketing theory says positive modelling is the key. But positive modelling takes a long time to be effective. All social change does. It's understandable that Children's Healthcare of Atlanta chose a more confrontational approach, because they can see that it is an urgent public health crisis. But then again, so is smoking (especially around kids), alcohol dependence, and a general lack of concern about buying, cooking and eating healthy food.

None of these problems is going to be solved quickly using the blunt instrument of guilt advertising. All that does is preach to the choir, making impatient activists feel better that something major is being done.

No matter what people tell you, ads can only do so much. This is a job for doctors, nurses, educators and community leaders to take on, full-time, for the next 10 or 20 years. It's complicated, slow, and will not win anyone any awards. But it's what has to happen for real change to occur.